I was working on my crafty plan and it kept going on and on as I’ve got so many crafts that I work on, it became a very long post.  So I divided it up into parts.  This first part is specific to quilting.  As the other parts are finished, I’ll update this post with links to the other parts of the plan.

2018 Crafty Plan – Knitting 

2018 Crafty Plan – Cross Stitching

And the final post

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It’s a bit late but I’ve been working on these over the last couple of months of the year. In reviewing my 2017 plans I was reminded of my overarching non-craft specific goals:

1. Use what I have
2. Get rid of the things that I don’t love anymore
3. Only buy things I will use now

In a couple of years, the family and I will be moving.  Where and when depends on a lot of things – primarily on what the girl ends up doing in regards to college and second where the boy ends up going to high school.  Regardless of all that, the one thing that is a definite is that our next house will be much smaller than where we are now.

Over the last few years, I’ve made an effort to downsize, minimize, and reduce the amount of stuff I have.  The husband recently started going through our garage and selling the items we no longer use.  He’s cleared through a lot of it.  So over the next two years I need to reduce even more and not bring in more stuff.  I have no problem not buying clothes, shoes or tchotchkes.  But with fabric and yarn – it’s really difficult for me not to bring in more.  I want to support my LQS and my LYS and I really do not know how I’m going to NOT buy things over the course of the next 2 years.  I will allow myself to buy things for projects I need to finish or if there is a specific project I want to work on.  But I plan to not buy just to buy.  My exceptions are: Road to California in a couple of weeks, hopefully Stitches West in February, and QuiltCon in Pasadena in February as I do plan on buying there.  But I have a lot of stuff already so whatever I buy will need to be something truly special.  Also for 2018, I plan to take classes at my LQS and LYS and the monthly guild workshops and while I will go through my stash for things first I do plan to purchase anything I need for classes at my LQS and LYS and from the instructor.  This is going to be really hard.

Over the years, I’ve been more of a process person.  I enjoy the process of quilting, cross stitching, knitting, or whatever craft I take on.  I do things relatively slowly and deliberately and a bit meditatively.  But I enjoy most of the moments.  As with anything there is always a step one does not like but I try to take bits of pleasure at every stage.  Well, that will be changing this year. I need to finish more quilts, use the fabric I intended for bags, knit the yarn, etc.  So I need to create a plan, create a routine, and have fun while doing it.

The past few years I’ve had specific goals of how many quilts I want to finish, projects I want to work on and so forth.

For quilting, I want to finish quilts.  Here are the order of the projects I plan on working on:

1. Celtic Solstice – the top is finished, I just need to get the back done and get this quilted.
2. Quilty Little Christmas – the top is finished and I just need to get this quilted.  I got a solid back, and all I need to do is get it to the right size.  This quilt is much smaller than things I normally work on so I can do the quilting on my domestic.
3. I have a number of hand projects that I need to work on.
   1. Rainbow Garden Wool Applique – basically I plan to work on this during my mini group meetings and Sundays.
   2. Raining Cats and Dogs – I’m hand quilting this and I haven’t touched this project in months.  I really need to get to it and I plan to work on this the third Monday of each month.
4. I have a bunch of WIPs and UFOs that’s hanging out in my closet in bins.  I’m not sure which one I want to work on when Quilty Little Christmas is done so I’m going to leave this open.  I’m going to try to work on the tops that are nearly done first just to get the bin cleared out and see progress faster.  But I want to give myself the freedom to choose in case I want to do something different.  I do need to update my WIPs and UFOs page as I do not think it’s up to date.  Now that I’ve been taking workshops with my guild and classes at my LQS I’ve gotten quite a few new UFOs over the last few months.  And since I plan to continue taking workshops and classes I’m pretty sure this list will increase over the year.  I need to recognize this as a necessary evil as part of taking classes.  But I love taking classes, learning new things, being part of a group, and while I hope to get the projects done quickly, I’m not going to put that pressure on myself.  I’m just going to enjoy the different experiences.

Something I did this past year, for Christmas 2017, I basically gave away a ton of the things I made over the year.  I made a bunch of bags, some hats, and other things.  And for this past Christmas, I gave a lot of it away.  I really enjoyed it.  Of course, we still bought stuff but I need to replenish my gifting stash of stuff.  So I want to continue making bags and little things I can give away when I have a need of a gift.  I want to make mug rugs and place mats and other stuff.

~Stay tuned for next time when I talk about knitting, and cross stitching and my new routine for 2018.

~Happy Crafting!

~Melanie